Global Investment Outlook: 2026 and beyond

Executive summary

• In 2026, we foresee broadening opportunities across global capital markets, driven by attractive profits growth outside the United States and by global monetary policy easing.
• Yield curves look poised to steepen, and the US dollar will remain weak.
• We believe emerging debt and equity markets, European equities, and US smaller-capitalization stocks should lead the way in 2026. Still, US equity returns, including in the leading information technology sector, should remain solid, in our view.
• Within private markets, commercial real estate debt, infrastructure and secondary offerings of private equity are our preferred areas.
• Longer term, the key driver of returns remains innovation, above all in the information technology sector, private investments and digital finance.
• That all said, we think a health warning is in order. We have entered an era of big and intrusive government, which risks lowering returns and increasing risk across capital markets over the remainder of this decade.

Introduction

As 2025 draws to a close, it is time to turn our attention to 2026 and beyond. In this global outlook, we highlight our top investment ideas, both for the coming year and over the longer run.

We encapsulate our 2026 (cyclical) and our long-term (secular) investment analysis into two separate categories of three themes each.

For 2026, our cyclical themes are: Broadening, Steepening and Weakening. Broadening reflects our conviction that investment opportunities across regions and asset classes are expanding. Steepening refers to yield curves, where falling short-term interest rates will incentivize investors to move out of cash holdings and into risk assets, including equities, credit and fixed income duration. Weakening regards the US dollar, which bodes well for emerging debt and equity markets, and is also an important development for portfolio management and hedging strategies.

As we elaborate in this global outlook, our cyclical themes intersect—akin to Venn-diagrams—with reinforcing implications across investor portfolios.

Turning to the longer term, we believe the following themes will dominate the coming half-decade: The Age of Intelligence, the Mainstreaming of Private Markets and An Era of Big Government. Each has profound implications for strategic investment decision-making.

In this global outlook, we will first consider the short-term outlook for 2026. We then turn to the long-term view. We conclude with the risks to our views and a summary of the key investment implications.